A Harbinger from Canada?

While we await the results of the British election under way today, I wonder if there’s anything to be made of the recent provincial election in Alberta, where the fringey, left-wing NDP ousted the long-serving “Progressive Conservative” party.  (Yeah, yeah, I know “progressive conservative” is an oxymoron, but we’re talking about Canada here.)  This is being regarded as a political earthquake, and rightly so; given that energy-rich Alberta is the Texas of Canada, it is as though Texas threw out Republicans and elected the Green Party and Elizabeth Warren as their next governor.

The main explanation is that the Progressive Conservatives had been in power too long, and had grown sloppy and mildly corrupt.  But the NDP is publicly critical of Alberta’s energy economy: will they actually attempt to govern by this agenda, and turn Alberta into a Great White North version of Venezuela?  (Canadian provinces enjoy a great deal more sovereignty over economic regulation that American states do. But talk about getting hosed!) And might we see a similar surprise out of the UK tonight?

Canadian journalist Ezra Levant offers his “ten observations” on the Alberta election in this nine-minute video:

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